


The Adventure At Rose Bridge

by realsorceror



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gallows Humor, Minor Spoilers, Monster Hunters, Murder, Story With A Moral, romance is stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 09:50:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13211235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realsorceror/pseuds/realsorceror
Summary: "An Enlightening Tale, recounted by Ves of the Blue Stripes"





	The Adventure At Rose Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> Ves is my favorite character; I was always kind of bummed out that she didn't get more 'screen time' in the games.  
> Takes place sometime shortly after the end of the events in Witcher 2.  
> Slight spoilers but nothing that will ruin any major plot points (I think.)

Editor's Note:

_The events of this story cannot be corroborated by any reliable witnesses due to the unfortunate demise of all residents of the town of Rose Bridge. Therefore, the accounting of events and especially the opinions contained in this body of work are those of the author of this tale, not of the Publisher – as are all language and grammatical errors. Readers interested in the adventures of Witcher Geralt may find this an amusing, if unverifiable and highly colorful, anecdote:_

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

War changes a lot of things around itself.

At the time I was feeling like things had been shaken up beyond repair. Between regicides, crazy ghosts, dragons, and sundry other events, the world was on unsteady footing.

Nevertheless, it still seemed like for every shiny new roadside gallows and hastily-erected military checkpoint there was something that remained exactly the same as it used to be. There was always someone in the fields, even if knights and infantry had just finished trampling the furrows. Merchants crossed the landscape with only slightly more bribery than usual. And, as one told Roche, if the soldiers just happened to clear out some of the highwaymen and bandits, so much the better for everyone.

This story is about how normal life still goes on, even in the face of certain adversity.

It all happened in a town in former Temeria – the place was called Rose Bridge, so all can check and see that every word I write is true. Geralt the Witcher was still traveling with us at the time. We'd left Loc Muinne some weeks before and what with Roche being an outlawed kingslayer and Geralt a freak things were getting a bit lean and hungry. Geralt therefore allowed that he'd be willing to help us out one last time, being that we had spent so much time together already.

Like most towns, Rose Bridge had a notice board by the inn. The wars hadn't changed those, either.

We weren't staying in the inn, in case some local hero recognized Roche's face from the wanted posters. I rode in with Geralt and left the commander in camp. The villagers stared us down. They seemed nervous.

“They probably think we're soldiers,” said Geralt. A month before, they would have been right. I shrugged and let them stare.

The notice board was under a tree. On the tree a carcass hung by the neck. I studied the rotten features. Geralt barely gave it a glance.

“Missing crockery,” he read off the board. I always wondered to myself whether he talked to _himself_ or to his horse or what, as I was pretty sure he wasn't reading the messages to me. I idled and kept an eye on the peasants. They were starting to disperse, having realized that we weren't an advance party for raiders or a company of pressers.

“A warning about poaching. Probably related to our dead friend, there. Dead chickens. Looking for farm hands? Don't think we're that desperate,” Geralt continued. I shrugged again and amused myself by imagining Vernon Roche harrowing a field.

“Wanted posters. Tax levies. Dice poker game. Nothing much here for us, Ves.”

Disappointing. I thought, but not completely surprising. Times were tough and the locals probably were content to live around the monsters rather than spend gold on a witcher.

“Maybe monsters are in short supply here,” I said. “Because of the war?”

“Rarely my experience,” The witcher responded.

“I guess I could try my hand at farming. What is it, harvest time?”

A cold wind picked up through the barren trees, blowing off the nearby marsh. A last remaining yokel stood and stared glassily at us. I stared back at him boldly, like he was a dog thinking about whether or not to attack us.

“That would have been months ago,” Geralt noted. “It's an older notice.”

“Lookin' for work, Master Witcher?”

The staring man, prudently, yelled at us from across the dirty street. Geralt's head swiveled around so he could study him.

“Who's asking?”

The man seemed to take the response for encouragement.

“Name's Barley,” he said, approaching a few steps. I scowled and placed a hand to sword. He stopped with comical rapidity.

“Got gold, if you're in need of such. Should be an easy matter for one like as yourself.”

“A freak,” explained some passerby. “An' his unnatural whore.”

All present ignored the interjection, including myself as I was used to hearing worse.

“Can even offer ye a free drink and meal in this inn, if ye will hear me out,” Barley offered. Geralt didn't require much extra time to consider the offer. As I said, times were hard, and it's a myth that witchers don't need food to live.

 

The inn was called the Wheel of Cheese. I'll spare details otherwise; all village inns are, in peace and in war, pretty much the exact same. Geralt did the introductions over a couple of pretty good sandwiches and a pitcher of some local brew. I tried not to eat too fast.

“Let's talk business,” the witcher said finally. Barley rose to the occasion with a show of a small purse of orens.

Barley was a big man, older than me but not as old as Roche, with weird blue eyes. It was those that had attracted my notice toward his staring, because, otherwise, he looked much the same as everyone else that lived in that or any other farm town in Velen.

“It's me brother,” said he. “Went missing some two weeks ago, right after harvest was in. Thought he was just on a bender again, but there's drowners about, so we was worried nonetheless. Then three days ago 'is left leg washed up on the riverbank.”

Geralt frowned.

“Just his left leg? How'd you know is was his?”

“Oh,” said Barley. “Got a tattoo on the shin. Unit banner. From our army days. Fought the Black Ones for a few years.”

Him, I thought to myself, and pretty much everyone else alive.

“Still got the limb?”

Barley shook his head.

“Buried it, in case we didn't ever find the – the rest o' his body.”

“Anyone else that might know more?”

“There's his widow, but I don't know as she'd be much more help.”

Geralt was frowning. Barley stared at him in vapid hope. I tried not to look too disgusted.

Roche, at that point, probably would've narrowed his eyes and snarled something derogatory about civilians and stomped out. Geralt was more of an empathetic sort, but not, it must be said, by much.

“Well,” he said after thinking it over, “You bought us a meal, and for that I'll take a look, but I can't promise much.”

Even that small hope elicited a flood of gratitude from Barley. We escaped from his effervescence and back into the evening as soon as we ever could, with directions to the victim's farmhouse echoing in our ears.

 

I'd stolen two of the sandwiches to give to Roche, which may or may not have lightened the burden of spending a day or two camping in the cold woods. I wasn't upset when he ordered me to keep helping the witcher. It had started to drizzle and, by next morning, the commander was in as foul as mood as I'd ever seen.

Me and Geralt abandoned him to his sulk A.S.A.P.

We walked back through the sodden village and along the river to where Barley's directions had detailed. The house was on a small hill above a few empty fields and a moldy-looking graveyard. Was there, I surmised, that they'd buried Barley's brother's left leg. Next to the house was a pigsty and, as we approached, out of it came a woman. She was younger than me and sort of pretty, as peasants went. I don't think Geralt was really trying to put the works on her but, after a few minutes of idle nothings, she looked more flattered than apprehensive.

“Heard about your husband,” he said finally. “My condolences. Barley hired us to make some inquiries.”

Her eyes flashed to me, standing in the background, like she hadn't noticed I was there before. I smiled back sarcastically.

“Pleased,” she said. “Come in.”

 

Her name was Lily, it turned out, and her husband had been called Pumpkin. Her farmhouse was an orderly and clean affair, although barren of much decoration. A big woodcutting axe rested against the wall, just inside the front door.

“My husband,” Lily said to Geralt, “It's a pity, what happened to him.”

She didn't look all that upset about it to me, but as I'd gotten into the habit of keeping my mouth shut during other people's interrogations, I kept my opinion to myself.

“What exactly _did_ happen?”

She smoothed out the tablecloth to keep from looking up at us. Geralt didn't let on whether or not he noticed.

“We finished the turnips,” she said. “He got drunk that night, as how he often did. Went down the hill toward the inn, never came back. Barley said drowners probably got him. Did he hire you to hunt them down?”

Geralt shrugged.

“Seems that way.”

Lily looked up so she could glance between us. I followed Geralt's lead and shrugged, too.

“Well,” said Lily, “They found his leg washed up next to the old dock. Keep going down th' path behind the house, you'll see it. Watch out for monsters. They always seem to like coming out in the rain.”

“Thanks,” said Geralt. “So long.”

 

Around the house and down the hill we went. Geralt seemed to be in a chatty sort of mood.

“This dock,” he said. “Not exactly on the way to the inn, is it?”

“Drowner's could've just brought the body here.”

A familiar gurgling shriek echoed up through the trees.

“Not really typical drowner behavior,” said Geralt. “Silver works best on monsters. You'd better let me handle the rest of this.”

I rolled my eyes at his back.

“What, go back to the commander without a handful of gold and a sack of food to lighten the mood? Not on your life. I brought my crossbow for a reason.”

“Suit yourself.” Geralt was loosening his silver sword in the scabbard. The echoing screams were closer in the trees; I could hear water lapping up against a shore, too.

“Try not to shoot me,” he said.

 

The witcher did not need my help. I stood and waited for him to finish his work. He went after the first monster that crawled out of the mud and didn't stop until they quit coming for more. All told he accounted for about ten. One's dismembered arm flew ten yards and hit a tree next to me. I was impressed despite myself.

He was shaking slimy purple stuff off his gloves when I finally picked my way through the carnage and down to the decaying boat dock. The rain had picked up.

“Nice day,” he remarked, not even slightly out of breath. “Let's look around.”

Without further ado, he strolled over to the dock, laid down in the bloody sand, and stared into the dark underside like he was expecting to find something. I waited a second and poked at a few of the bodies with my toe. Something shiny flashed in a pile of disembowled intestines.

Nobody's ever accused me of being weak in the stomach area. I seen bodies in all manner of ways. I still felt my gut do a flip when I crouched down to investigate. A drowner's got dark purple guts and the smell they put off, I reckon, comes from a diet of muck and rotting dead men's meat.

“What do you have there?”

Geralt's boots squelched forth through the river mud and monster carcasses. They were spattered liberally with gore. I wiped my mouth on my arm and pointed at the shiny object. He bent down, fished around in the pile of guts, and pulled forth what looked to be a ring.

I escaped quickly and was sick all into the river water.

While I was giving myself a few extra seconds to make sure no more of my paltry breakfast was going to revisit this mortal coil, Geralt pretended to look through the rest of the bodies. I spotted a hulking shape in the trees while his back was turned to it.

I swung my crossbow around, jammed the stock into my shoulder, aimed, and squeezed the trigger without thinking about it. The bolt sank itself into the creature's eye in mid-leap. A bare instant later Geralt slashed its head clean off. He regarded the body for a moment.

“Corpse eater,” he explained. “Feeling better?”

I nodded.

“Take a look,” he said, and tossed me the ring I'd found. It was copper,with a number IV and a crude shield stamped onto the face.

“It's a division insignia,” I said. I'd had a similar memento from the Blue Stripes. It was long gone; I'd buried it in the same grave as Shorty and Finch and the others. “Think it was Pumpkin's?”

“That'd be my guess,” said the witcher. “there's a lot of bones under that dock, too, in the drowner nest.”

I glanced in that direction and made an uncertain face. He got the message and kept talking.

“Bones are all chewed up, like I expected. What's strange is that it looks like they were separated from each other before the drowners got to the body.”

I frowned blankly.

“What, like with a sword?”

“Around here, I'd guess probably an axe.”

“Huh,” I said. On that note, we both fell silent. Geralt busied himself ripping and slicing bits off the drowner corpses. I stared fixedly into the trees and waited for him to finish.

“Drowner brains and tongues can be used in potions,” Geralt explained. I swallowed hard.

Asshole.

I turned my thoughts to the demise of Pumpkin, decided that the circumstances were suspicious, and wondered to myself who'd hack his body up and throw it out for drowners to eat. Maybe, I told myself, the locals would have some ideas. No doubt Barley would be interested in the subject.

On our way back up trail, I remarked on it.

 

“I agree,” Geralt said, “But it doesn't really matter.”

“What?” My voice rose slightly. I scowled sideways at him. He was just staring up the path as we walked, and I soon saw what he was looking at. Vernon Roche had appeared at the trailhead. Clearly he had gotten bored of camp and had been waiting on us.

“I'm a monster hunter,” the witcher said. “Way I see it, monsters are dead. Victim's been located. Job here is done.”

The commander jacked himself up off the tree stump he'd been sitting on and eyeballed me. I could feel my face getting hot.

“But what about the rest? How'd he end up all chopped up under an abandoned dock? You don't think maybe his family might want to know?”

Roche interrupted.

“The witcher's right. Not our problem.”

I caught a glimpse of a face in the window of the nearby farmhouse. Lily was looking out, listening to us. She vanished as soon as we made eye contact.

I was sure Geralt had seen her, too, but he made no sign. Maybe he frowned ever so slightly. Roche, who's back was to the house, kept talking meanwhile.

“It's not our job to solve everyone's problems, Ves. Right now we have enough trouble for ourselves.”

“Mhm,” commented the witcher, and stared distantly up at the leafless tree branches.

Hypocritical old bastards, I thought to myself.

“Fine,” I said, with ill grace. I'd already made up my mind about what to do anyway.

I needed to have another talk with Lily. I would have to have a look under that dock myself. My only trouble was managing to lose Roche and Geralt for a few hours.

 

Luckily, the commander was so cheered by the sight of thirty orens that he threw caution to the winds and rented a room in the Wheel of Cheese. He and Geralt then took up what looked to be permanent residence at a table that was soon laden with empty vodka bottles and the remains of a ham.

An hour or two into their boozing, I announced an ill feeling in my stomach and begged off. Roche affected an expression of polite indifference to my troubles. Geralt smirked. I rolled my eyes at them both, went up to the claustrophobic little room they'd rented, popped the second-story window open, and was out and off into the rainy night before five more minutes had passed.

 

To get the worst over first, I snuck immediately down to the river. I knew someone would probably see me if I took the main trail to the dock, so I picked my way through the marsh instead. A thick fog had risen out of the river and, though nobody and nothing spotted me, I _heard_ more than my share of noises. I was no stranger to wood or fen, but I could swear something big and heavy flapped overhead in the fog and off toward the trees, and more'n once I heard a swishing noise in the river, away out of sight in the mist. I almost tripped over the dock before I saw it, so busy was I looking over my shoulder in certainty that something was splashing softly along in my footsteps.

I knelt down in the mud and ducked to look under the dock. It was pitch black – impossible to see anything, and I hadn't had a chance to steal a light from the public house. I sighed, took in a breath of the reeking night air, and reached my hand down into the darkness.

I half expected something to bite it, but nothing happened. I therefore groped around in the mud till I grabbed hold of something and pulled it forth into view.

It was a gnawed up arm bone, missing half its fingers and growing moldy. It was a left hand. The part that should have been connected to a shoulder had clean white marks in it, like a freshly cut branch.

The next bone I laid hand on was a skull with a few neck vertebrae still attached. The spine showed the same marks of being severed by a sharp object. The skull had a big chop mark in the back, like a blazed tree.

I rolled my eyes at the sight.

“You _guess_ it _might_ have been an axe, huh, Geralt?”

I shoved the skull in my satchel, wiped my hands off on my pants, and stood up.

“You're so smart.”

Something in the dark fog chose that moment to make an eerie squelching noise. I jumped slightly, tossed the arm bone back under the dock, and moved quickly on.

The beach was still covered in horrifying carcasses. Apparently even vultures didn't want to eat drowners. But, then, why would they? Plenty of dead humans around for them to munch on. I was careful not to step in any of the bodies.

The wooded trail uphill was worryingly quiet, after all the noises on the riverbank. Lights flowed through the farmhouse windows. I knocked on the door and looked out over the graveyard and pigsty.

The door creaked open behind me as I was thinking I'd seen something like a pair of eyes catching the light. They appeared to be looking at me from the trees. They vanished the instant I turned my head to try and stare them down.

“Hello?”

Lily's voice was confused. I shivered once, still staring out at the rainy darkness.

“Do you have a cat?”

“..No?” Her tone became suspicious. “What do ye want?”

I shook off the feeling I had, like someone was watching us from out of sight, and attended to my business.

“Just have a question or two for you,” I said. Her face got more, then less dark. She pulled the door open the rest of the way.

“Come in,” she said.

 

I did, though not without a backward glance. The farmyard seemed deserted.

Lily shut the door behind me and I found myself looking down at the big axe that had previously been next to the door. She held it for a moment, then appeared to make a decision and set it down in its place.

“War on, monsters everywhere,” she commented, seeing my somewhat concerned expression. “Can never be too careful.”

“Very prudent,” said I, becoming somewhat uncharacteristically mannerly.

“Soup?”

“Pleased.”

My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten much at the inn, on account of my ruse.

She went out of sight to what I assumed was probably a kitchen. Crockery rattled from whatever corner she kept it in. I took my chance, whipped the skull out of my satchel, strode the couple paces to where the axe leaned against the doorjamb, and held the gory artifact up to the blade.

The chopped part matched exactly, as I'd suspected it might.

Lily cleared her throat, pointedly, behind me. I turned around, still holding the dead man's head. She looked at it, at me, and set a bowl of soup on the table.

“Care to explain?”

She seemed unsurprised, as if she'd expected this or as if such occurrences were somehow normal.

“You first,” I said.

“Well, if ye still wanted to eat, here it is,” said Lily. “Won't join you. Afraid my desire's gone.”

I put my severed head away, wiped my hands off on my jacket, and sat down.

The soup was made from vegetables and some kind of grain. Lily waited politely for me to finish.

“How was it?”

I put my spoon down. I was getting that weird feeling again. Not because this was anywhere near the first time I'd had a polite dinner with a violent murderer – that was a daily occurrence in my life – but it still felt as if someone was watching my back. It wasn't a reassuring emotion. I resisted the urge to turn around and check the windows for some kind of spooky face.

“Soup was, uh, very..turnipy. Good.”

She seemed gratified. I found myself suddenly out of patience for pleasantries.

“Well, why'd you do it, then?”

There's really no polite way to steer a conversation toward why the other party killed their husband with an axe. I know, having, since then, asked Triss Merigold.

Lily shrugged.

“You know how it is,” she said. “You marry a man. Your parents don't need no extra mouths to feed when one's old enough to take off and feed itself, right?”

Matter of fact, I did not know. The Squirrels had relieved me of both parents and any other such problems in one fell swoop. It seemed imprudent to bring all that up at the moment. I just nodded instead.

“Man they picked has got a farm. Things are alright. He's a bit hard, but who isn't, these days? Then, one day, Sherriff comes riding through town. Presses everyone in the village who's fit for service. Off to fight for Temeria.”

My fine-tuned intuition suggested that it was best to continue keeping my mouth shut.

“My husband and his brother both went. They was gone for years, and when they come back, they ain't the same. Barley's gone all soft in the head, but Pumpkin ended up the opposite. Don't know why it happened, but..”

She trailed off. A helpless shrug finally punctuated her sentence.

“He beat me – Pumpkin – broke my ribs, once. I changed inside, a little at a time, just like he had. Didn't really decide on a time to do it, but the night after we finished the tunips, he was drunk and I was here, just looking at him sitting there. Right where you are. Looking at the back of his head. Took up the wood axe, raised it up, swung it down. Don't think he even knew it happened.”

“Oh,” I responded, for lack of another thing to say. Lily picked up my empty bowl and took it back to wherever it had come from. I stood up, feeling awkward, but not wanting to be in the dead man's seat anymore.

“So then,” she continued, “I couldn't carry his whole corpse at once. It was too big. Chopped it up instead, like a tree. Threw the pieces in the wheelbarrow, took it down the back of th' hill. Dropped it off for the drowners. Didn't think anyone would be the wiser. Got a little nervous, when that witcher turned up, but then it looked like he was the type to let things lie where they should.”

She eyed me pointedly, coming back into view. I cleared my throat.

“This has been, uh, enlightenin',” I said, not failing to notice her trajectory toward the door. “But I suspect my comrades are probably going to notice I'm gone, very soon..”

She failed to the take the hint. I went for my sword at the same time that she reached for the axe. She dropped the door bar with one hand and pointed the axe at me with the other. It made my rapier feel, at best, inadequate.

“Listen,” I said, making one last-ditch attempt, “Just let me go. I won't tell anybody what you did.”

She shook her head at me.

“Sorry. I'm sure, you being what you are, that you understand. I can't be taking any chances.”

She advanced toward the table. I decided to quit arguing, shifted away so that it was between me and her, juked left, and chucked one of the kitchen stools at her head.

She smashed it in midair with her axe.

I decided that whatever I did was going to have to be rapid and decisive, before she had a chance to get at me with that farm tool. I circled the table again, dropped my sword, and suddenly bum-rushed her with the dagger. My tackle put both of us on the ground. A massive crash ensued, from somewhere off to my left. The table banged against the wall. The fire in the fireplace went out.

The floor was suddenly covered in arm-length splinters. I took one in the thigh during my fall. Lily was less lucky; a particularly large and vicious specimen got jammed right through her stomach, front to back. I got a sudden image in my head of Vernon Roche spearing a Black One. It looked just like that.

The axe clattered to the floor a little ways off.

I heard Geralt's voice, sounding a long ways off.

“Shit,” he said.

 

I sat up, leaving Lily gasping out her last desperate breaths next to me. The splinter in my thigh didn't look, to my eye, like it was going to kill me. My ears were ringing and I had a pounding headache, though, and when I wiped my hand across my nose it was a little bloody. A cold wind blew through a massive hole in the wall where, a minute before, there had been a door.

Geralt stomped around through the mess and crouched down in front of me. His features were blurring in and out of focus. I painfully put two and two together.

“You fucking oaf,” I said. “Why'd you have to blast the fucking door off the hinges like that?”

“Saved your life,” he commented, and sat down on the floor. I rolled my eyes. I thought about telling him to mind his own beeswax in future, but even I wasn't really buying that I had been about to come out of that fight in one piece. I wasn't about to thank him for his trouble, though.

I glanced at the fresh corpse next to me and sighed.

“You almost killed me, too,” I complained. Geralt of Rivia, who as I've said before has the patience of a saint, shrugged apathetically.

My hands shook. A late burst of adrenaline had hit my system.

“You seem lively enough,” he said. “Though that might change when Roche gets his hands on you. You scared the shit out of him. He's so worried that he's gone sober.”

He raised a meaningful eyebrow at me. I was, and always am, loath to apologize for wrongdoings, but I sighed and wiped my bleeding nose and did my level best.

“I know. It's my fault. My fault stupid Lily is dead and that you had to blow up a house. I should just learn to mind my own business. Where's the commander?”

Geralt sort of smiled a bit.

“Apology accepted. He's safely outside the village, ready to head for the hills. Literally, he says. He seems to have figured some kind of plan of action.”

I eyed the witcher suspiciously.

“You aren't coming, are you?”

He shook his head and mumbled about having things he had to take care of, or something.

Maybe I was still shaky from almost getting chopped up with an axe and fed to water monsters. I scrambled painfully over and wrapped my arms around his neck in a big hug.

And I said: I'm going to miss you.

 

The next morning, as we rode through crazy war-ravaged former Temeria, I found myself feeling oddly reassured. People come and go. Scenery changes. 'Tis all a normal part of life, just like turnips. Or violently murdering one's relatives. Or Roche's simmering foul temper. For every unexpected ambush by irate farm peasants, there's a friend you can rely on. A friend who, when the rain finally ends and the sun breaks through the clouds, is there to wipe his bloody sword on a body and share the moment with you.

“Stop fucking smiling,” Roche snarled. “There's a fucking war on.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
